With ever increasing sophistication in available technology, piracy of intellectual property has become widespread. Pirated movies on DVD or VHS often appear concurrently with the first run of the movies in theaters. Making anti-piracy efforts even more difficult, sensing devices which used to be somewhat bulky have become miniaturized, such that their physical presence often escapes detection. These sensing devices such as cameras, microphones, video recorders, and sound recorders can now be embedded in phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), watches, or any other wireless transmit/receive unit (WTRU) that a manufacturer desires. It has therefore become easier than ever to secrete a sensing device into an event such as a play, movie, and the like.
These sensing devices can record and/or transmit images and sounds that are not authorized to be recorded or transmitted by the individual recording them. Once a scene or a sound has been captured, the sensed data may be distributed fairly easily through a variety of channels, such as a cellular or other wireless communication network.
To combat this piracy, some businesses have attempted to regulate miniaturized sensing devices by either posting restrictions in restricted areas or by physically searching for their existence. However, these methods are often difficult to enforce, ineffective and inefficient.
Electronic control of sensing has been attempted with systems which broadcast radio frequency (RF) beacons that signal sensing devices to disable their sensing functionality. The problem, however, with electronically regulating sensing devices in such a manner is that a sensing device must be so equipped in order to receive such RF signals, and a large number of sensing devices are not. In those devices that are so equipped, the RF receiving functionality can easily be modified by the user of the device whom may be able to hack into, and disable, the functionality preventing sensing.
Since modern WTRUs often come integrated with enhanced storage and transmission functionality, an ever increasing quantity of timely unauthorized data can be transferred by the WTRU. Accordingly, it is desirable to have a method and apparatus for preventing the transfer of unauthorized data over a wireless communication system.